Legal News

Retrial of smoking case nets plaintiff half of original damages

By Richard Binder

A Los Angeles jury awarded $13.8 million in punitive damages against Philip Morris USA on Aug. 24 in the retrial of a case that originally netted a record $28 billion to a lifetime smoker.

The smoker, Betty Bullock, who was 17 when she started smoking in the 1950s, died one year after obtaining the original 2002 award, which later was reduced to $28 million. Bullock also received $850,000 in compensatory damages at that time.

Last year, California's 2d District Court of Appeal reversed the punitive damages altogether, finding that the judge in the original trial had failed to give necessary jury instructions. The $28 billion award, the appellate panel concluded, was equivalent to $1 million for each of the alleged 28,000 deaths in California caused by smoking during the past 40 years. The appellate court ordered a new trial on the amount of punitive damages.

Full story at NLJ.com.

Full post as published by Legal Pad | LA on August 25, 2009 (boomark / email).